The term "Gamer" by itself can apply to nearly anyone who plays video games on a regular basis or even once in a long while. However, even among gamers and the definitions on this site there is a large amount of debate about who and what gamers exactly are. The best way to define the term "gamer" is not to define it at all but accept that there are in fact many types of gamers out there and there is no blanket term that can cover them all.

Casual gamers are the people who mostly own console systems and buy mostly sports and racing games. They don't like fantasy games and only enjoy sci-fi games based on movies they may have seen. This group, unfortunatly, makes up the bulk of the gaming community and the current popularity of shitty games on shitty console systems is evidence of this. Casual Gamers think that having a "life" consists entirely of getting laid and drunk on a regular basis and have very little interest in games outside of a way to pass the time without spending alot of money.

The group of people who call themselves Hardcore gamers aren't often quite as "hardcore" about gaming as they would like to think. These are the people you see complaining that games now come in fancy modes like "3D" and debating the finer points of why Final Fantasy 6 was better than Final Fantasy 7. The only people who might actually be hardcore are the people who sit an camp the firegiant hideout in evercamp for 72 hours at a time just to get some item that will help them camp better. I wouldn't rate either side of this coin as being a very pretty sight.

Finally there are the true gamers who actually treat gaming as a real HOBBY and not just a way to pass time or something to try and collect hundred upon thousands of. True Gamers just try to find an enjoy the best games out there and don't like getting ripped off because Casual gamers are pushing the industry towards a point where the only games that will be profitable are Madden and GTA. True Gamers often own high quality PC's and play PC games most often. Despite what most people might think a PC isn't hard to operate and doesn't cost too much. The people who say PC's are too expensive are often spending hundreds of dollars on console systems that can't do even half as many things as a PC can do and to make matters worse they own more than one of these stone age devices.

True Gamers: Don't pay attention to the poseurs and bums out there who just play Madden or are too busy talking about Final Fantasy 6 to play anything at all. Just continue to buy good games from good companies so our little corner of the gaming community doesn't end up with an "Out of bussiness" sign hanging on the door.

Somebody who finds refuge from the sheer mundanity of everyday life in the bosom of a particularly engrossing videogame. General stereotypes have already been mentioned, but in my experience with fellow gamers, they are largely misanthropic and just find most people uninteresting. This could perhaps explain why many are seen as socially inept and introverted, but then again, I doubt misanthropia is a popular mindset. The gamers I know are well-read and erudite (in contrast with the idea that games 'rot your brain' - ever noticed how people who make such claims are usually Big Brother watching idiots themselves?).

A gamer is someone (can be male or female) who plays games more than once a week (sometimes even 2 or 3 times a day). I'll just have all you haters out there know that most gamers are not socially handicapped, nerds, and usually have a hell of a lot more friends than non-gamers. Also, if any of you haters out there spent any time at all in the daylight instead of on the internet bashing gamers, maybey you would see that the gaming community is a LOT bigger than you imagined, and I bet that you will find at least one person you know is a gamer.

One of my best friends can squat two plates (415 pounds in all) , he is a gamer.

Any other stereotypical definition is useless: I play online games a lot. I am over 40, have a girlfriend, am in good physical shape and I hold down a fairly high-pressure job. I am college educated.
Some of the younger gamers that I meet online fit the nerdy stereotype but no more than the average cross-section of high-school students. There is a higher than average number of creative professionals in the game servers I go to (probably because I go to the Mac servers).
I also have LAN parties at my house - my friends come round, we drink a few beers, get a take-away, link our computers together and fight to the death. The other three are married and two have kids. Three of us have college degrees and we are all fairly high earners.
Your stereotype is way off.

My friends and I are serious gamers: we often meet to play Ghost Recon.

An all-inclusive term to describe the maligned, often-misunderstood group of people that regularly engage in video, computer, or tabletop games.

Though the percentage of people who participate in such activities has increased in recent years, a certain stigma still surrounds those elite few who can call themselves "true gamers". These are the people you see getting together for a rousing session of Dungeons & Dragons once a week, or who you will regularly see planted in front of a TV or computer monitor, immersed in the bliss of gamedom.

This is not to say gamers are the bespectacled hermits that the stereotype has long been. We are everywhere, in many shapes and forms. We live and breathe the likes of Halo, Warcraft, Unreal Tournament, Mage: The Ascension, and more. And the gamer is here to stay.

I like Halo 2, but that Paul is a real gamer. He skipped class and beat it in two days!

Participants in the tabletop roleplaying game Dungeons & Dragons inherently deserve the title of "gamer".